Left: Donald Trump speaks at a conference in Washington, D.C. in June (Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: Fulton County DA Fani Willis arrives during a March hearing on the Georgia election interference case (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool).
Fulton County DA Fani Willis (D) has responded to ongoing appellate efforts to disqualify her from prosecuting Donald Trump and RICO case co-defendants by rejecting complaints about “race card” remarks she made at a historically Black church in Atlanta, Georgia, ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, comments defending former lover Nathan Wade from criticism months before he resigned as special prosecutor from the case due to an “appearance of impropriety.”
While the Trump team has argued that Willis “disqualified herself” by placing “personal, financial, political, and romantic interests before not only her own professional integrity” and by making “unethical and outrageous” comments that wrongly injected “racial animus” into the case, the DA’s office has answered that defendants “failed” to sway the trial judge on these issues and should not be rewarded with her disqualification absent proof of “actual impropriety.”
“The Appellants sought to disqualify District Attorney Fani T. Willis by persuading the trial court that she had engineered the present case, which involves issues of national importance and daily public scrutiny, as a scheme for her personal enrichment. They failed,” the brief said at the outset. “After giving the Appellants every opportunity to provide evidence and argument in support of their theory, the trial court decided that their central witness had provided no information of value and that their central theory did not add up. The court declared that the Appellants had failed to demonstrate that the District Attorney’s conduct had negatively affected their rights or the case at all.”
“It credited the District Attorney’s testimony on crucial aspects of the facts at issue, found that she had not acquired an improper personal stake in the case, and determined that her public statements about the case would not affect any future trials,” the brief continued.
In March, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, having heard Wade and Willis’ testimony about their prior romantic relationship from 2022 to 2023, issued an ultimatum that either he or the DA and her office had to step aside, writing that while he did not find “an actual conflict of interest in this case through [Willis’] personal relationship and recurring travels with her lead prosecutor,” there was nonetheless a “significant appearance of impropriety” that needed to be remedied.
Nathan Wade appears during a Fulton County court hearing on Feb. 15, 2024 (Law&Crime).
Through Wade quickly exited the case, Trump lawyers mounted an appeal of McAfee’s decision, insisting that Willis must also go — while also reupping her words during a speech at Big Bethel A.M.E. Church on Jan. 14, where she criticized the defense for their laser-like focus on Wade, who, like her, is Black.
“I’m a little confused,” Willis said that day. “I appointed three special counsel, as is my right to do. Paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one. I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and great lawyer. A superstar, I tell you, I hired one white man, brilliant, my friend and a great lawyer. And I hired one Black man. Another superstar a great friend and a great lawyer. Oh, Lord, they’re going to be mad when I call them out on this nonsense. First thing they say. Oh, she going to play the race card now? But no. God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?”
In June, the DA’s office attacked the appeal as “not supported by the actual evidence,” urging the state appellate court not to second-guess McAfee. The just filed brief elaborated on that position and directly addressed the above remarks.
More Law&Crime coverage: Trump prosecutor who resigned from RICO case after judge’s ultimatum clams up mid-interview when asked about DA Fani Willis relationship
While the brief noted that McAfee disapproved of the “race card” comments as wading into “dangerous waters,” the DA’s office pointed out that the judge did not see the out-of-court statements as rising to the level of “forensic misconduct” requiring disqualification.
“The District Attorney did not express any personal opinions regarding a defendant’s guilt or discuss the actual substance of the present case at all. She did not ‘mention any Defendant by name,’ did not ‘address the merits of the indicted offenses in an effort to move the trial itself to the court of public opinion,”” the brief said.
What’s more, there is no jury in the case and won’t be for some time, given the appellate delays, so there was no one to “improperly influence,” the argument went.
“Although [McAfee] expressed disapproval of the District Attorney’s comments in her speech, it based its decision on disqualification on the likelihood of prejudice and the possibility of a fair trial,” the brief said. “There is no jury to improperly influence, and more than a year will have passed before a pool of possible jurors is even identified, much less selected and sworn.”
“There was no mention of any individual defendant, item of evidence (admissible or not), specific charge, or any other substantive aspect of this case, there was no attempt to move the case to the ‘court of public opinion,’ and of course there was no expression of a personal belief in anyone’s guilt,” the DA’s office continued. “There was no basis to conclude that the District Attorney’s intention was to sway a jury in the Appellants’ case—which is what forensic misconduct actually is, according to Williams and the authorities it relies upon—and the trial court correctly analyzed the facts and applied the law in refusing to disqualify her.”
In response to the Willis brief, Trump’s lead defense lawyer Steven Sadow said the state filing was long on pages and entirely short on explaining a reflexive playing of the “race card.”
“Nowhere in her 90-plus page brief does DA Willis even attempt to explain why she deliberately plays the race card at every opportunity,” Sadow said in a statement to Law&Crime. “Nor does she contest doing so violates the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct because it is intended to heighten public condemnation of the wrongfully accused defendants.”
Read the brief here.
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